The White House on Monday reiterated its call for the US Congress to pass new regulations that would require social networks like Twitter to be held accountable for the “damage they cause”.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki made this statement shortly after Twitter announced it had accepted an offer to acquire South African businessman Elon Musk for around $44 billion.
Psaki declined to comment on the “specific transaction” between Musk and Twitter, but said whoever owns the company, US President Joe Biden, “has long been concerned about the power of the big social media platforms.” “.
“(Biden) has long been saying that technology platforms should be held accountable for the damage they cause,” the spokeswoman pointed out at her daily news conference.
Psaki further stated that the US president “strongly supports the passage of fundamental reforms to achieve this goal”, including antitrust reforms that “demand more transparency” in these types of mergers or acquisitions.
Biden also believes that the so-called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 should be reformed, the spokeswoman recalled.
This section stipulates that large internet companies are exempt from almost all legal consequences arising from content posted on their platform and even from their own content removal decisions, because they should be mere intermediaries or channels.
Finally, Psaki added that there is “bipartisan interest” in Congress in pushing this kind of reform, something that “reassures” Biden.
Before buying Twitter, Musk had been highly critical of the social network and questioned whether its rules adhere “strictly” to the principle of freedom of expression.
His criticism raised many uncertainties, including among Twitter employees themselves, who were concerned that Musk could wield excessive power at the company to change its ethical posting standards.
Those rules led to the suspension of accounts of far-right figures, including former US President Donald Trump (2017-2021), who has been banned from Twitter since January 2021 after the company concluded his messages instigated the Capitol Hill attack.
In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Trump said he does not want to return to Twitter and that he plans to soon join the alternative social network he has been promoting, TRUTH Social.
